Scientists at war over Government funding

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Friday, 30 July 2010

An unseemly spat has broken out between two of the most distinguished bodies representing Britain's scientists and engineers over where the cuts should fall in the forthcoming review of the Government's science budget.

The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) has broken with the unwritten rule of not directly criticising another scientific discipline by suggesting that maths and physics get an unfair amount of government money compared to engineering and technology.

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The suggestion, made in the RAE's official submission to the Government's spending review, contradicts the advice of the equally distinguished Royal Society, which has privately intimated that the academy's suggestions are "unhelpful" in furthering the case for protecting the science budget.

In its submission, the RAE also criticises the funding allocated to particle physics, much of which is spent on the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva, which makes "a lower contribution to the intellectual infrastructure of the UK compared to other disciplines".

The RAE submission says: "Although particle physics research is important it makes only a modest contribution to the most important challenges facing society today, as compared with engineering and technology where almost all the research is directly or indirectly relevant to wealth creation."

Lord Browne, the president of the Royal Academy of Engineering and former chief executive of BP, believes that science funding in Britain needs to be "rebalanced". He would like to see funding concentrated on activities that contribute to the economy within the short to medium term, rather than the sort of blue-skies, basic research carried out by many of the fellows at the Royal Society just a few doors away in Carlton House Terrace, presided over by Lord Rees, a distinguished Cambridge cosmologist.

"It is not suggested that those subjects where research funding is reduced should disappear. However, the country cannot afford to invest as much in such areas as it presently does and, arguably, the needs for solutions to the fascinating problems that lie in some areas of basic science is not urgent," the RAE's submission states.

The Royal Society's submission to the Government does not identify possible areas for cuts but argues for a steady maintenance of science funding overall, with the Research Councils left to decide funding priorities. "Any cuts must be administered carefully so that they do not cause lasting damage and can be reversed when the public finances allow," the Royal Society says.

The difference in opinion between the academies re-opens the old wounds dividing science and engineering that were meant to have been healed when they were brought under the one roof of a joint research council nearly 30 years ago.

Brian Cox, a particle physicist at Manchester University who also works at Cern, said he was surprised to see the comments in the RAE's submission but does not believe it marks a deeper divide between the disciplines.

"You tend to get rivalry between the grandees. I don't see rivalry at my level, at the mid-level of people who in many ways are actually doing the science and engineering," Dr Cox said.

  • physicist55
    "Whereas in particle physics and cosmology, long-standing professorial cliques and outdated theories are propped up with Alice-in-Wonderland mathematics requiring a Universe of many dimensions to 'work', whereas observational science obstinately tells us there are still only three dimensions. Boring, but true." and wrong. Particle physics has vast amounts of experimental data supporting it and certainly does NOT require any extra dimensions to make it work. In fact the standard model of particle physics is by most measures more successful than any other theory ever devised to describe experimental data. Oh and they also gave you the world wide web which you are using to write your ill-informed diatribe.
  • mhenriday
    «Lord Browne, the president of the Royal Academy of Engineering and former chief executive of BP, believes that science funding in Britain needs to be "rebalanced".» There is no doubt that Edmund John Philip Browne speaks with the full moral authority that his background - not least his life-long association with that epitome of business ethics, BP gives him. Yes, indeed - drop basic physical science, drop CERN, and spend the funds saved on «research [that] is directly or indirectly relevant to wealth creation» - is Mr Browne finding his meagre pension from BP insufficient ? Perhaps, instead, funding should be taken form the RAE budget to find methods to teach BP and other petroleum companies how not to take shortcuts when drilling for oil. Admittedly this - putting prudence before profits - is a matter for sociology or moral philosophy (or, indeed, politics), branches of the humanities rather than engineering stricto sensu, but surely Mr Browne would agree that further research in this area is required ?... Henri
  • physicist55
    Tim Berners-Lee is a computer scientist. But he worked at CERN and the world wide web was only developed because it was solved a problem that the big particle physics experiments needed solving. The goverment in the 1980's commisioned a report on emerging communication technologies - people like you would have directed funding away from CERN and into where that report said to suggest directing them. But nowhere did it mention the world wide web or anything similar. People like you would have actively prevented it from being invented with your ignorance.

    The standard model does work very well. Its not "wrong" anymore than newtonian mechanics is wrong because it would not describe gravity in every situation, it is just an incomplete model that clearly works extremely well. Thats how science works. Eventually a better model will come along (and no I don't think that will be string theory)

    When you start claiming quarks are based on "shaky evidence" it shows you know nothing about science.

    "String theory, which is claimed to be required to explain some of the weirder tenets of particle physics, does indeed require several dimensions - it varies between eleven and nineteen, depending on who you are arguing with. Multi-dimensions have also been proposed to explain some of the workings of quantum chromodynamics, of which it is often said - "it is weirder than you could possibly imagine".

    Sorry but you are confusing different topics because you don't understand properly. No extra dimensions are required to explain any known experimental data. The standard model does not contain extra dimensions and has no requirement to add them.

    There is no evidence for string theory and it does not even predict anything we can measure.

    Having said that some people conjecture, without string theory, you can have extra dimensions and that if you *add* them to the standard model it would solve some problems - but so do many other additions. Extra dimensions are therefore purely hypothetical currently.

    "on-conservation of parity is a concept introduced by mathematicians to explain observations indicating that the Model is wrong. It is a concept as dodgy as proposing that the Laws of Thermodynamics are not observed and should have been an early warning that the whole theoretical base is too shaky to hold."

    So you are claiming parity violation does NOT occur in nature, despite experimental evidence to the contrary?
  • derekcolman
    Cuts in science funding should be made entirely in climate research. The UN and USA are already pouring too much money into it resulting in an unseemly scramble for funds and an outpouring of bad science. I don't expect the Royal Society to agree with that, but it would be much better than cutting funds for engineering projects that might have great financial benefit to the country.
  • mikelawre
    I tend to agree with Mittelweg in general. His specific examples may not all be correct, but the overall thrust of his point is good. There is always as conservative (small 'c') tendency in science. Your professor established this result. You followed on and built on it, and now you pass it on to the newcomers. That's 3 generations with an in-built preference for X over Y. So it will always be hard to overthrow existing theories. I know this to my cost, since I have been trying for 16 years to get published in peer reveiwed journals my work that is beyond the Standard Model. I would now give the .co.uk website which covers P(hysics) B(eyond) T(he) S(tandard) M(odel) but that would be underhand:-). But it does show how relativity and QM can be resolved together using a pre-quark model that starts with only one type of particle and its anti-particle. This pair, merged together, is what the underlying universe is made of and when not merged, three such pairs chase each other to form loops of 6 which are the quarks and leptons. No need for more than 3 dimensions and time started when the loops formed. We observe loops using loops, so time is local and relative. It suggests QM phenomena like entanglement, non-locality, orbitals, interference and superposition are due to the barrier nature of the underlying original pairs that form the background universe, with ?tunneling? by properties not particles. The particles themselves are the smallest and densest black holes possible and the merged pairs are zero mass black holes. Loops stack to form other particles like photons (loop and anti-loop rotating in the same sense about the same axis), neutrons (7 loops) and protons (7 loops). It shows why many paradoxes are not really paradoxes at all, because it depends on what level of ?building block? is under consideration. So both Bohr and Einstein were correct. Einstein that the underlying particles do not have probabilities, and Bohr because the interaction of loops with loops contains a minimum uncertainty based on the angular momentum of the constituent particles within the loops. It?s actually a simple theory but with very profound consequences. And by the way, there is no need for a Higgs particle because the mass of each loop is also a representation of the angular momentum and frequency of the constituent particles within the loop.
  • carl1729
    The mathematical sciences programme, the main source of funding for mathematics, accounts for less than 5% of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council budget. And this is too much?
  • rtj1211
    Lord Browne may well be right, but the reality of the HEIs is that the Russell Group is populated by far more 'basic researchers' than those happy to contribute to wealth creation. It would of course be heresy to suggest that well-performing 'smaller Institutions' whose links to industry are strong are 'performing better', but in economic terms they might be. Perhaps the data needs to be presented to allow a case to be presented as to the reality or otherwise of that? In my humble opinion, blue sky research is the luxury of wealth. It can often create new wealth long-term (although too often we open the door for other nations to clean up, just as we are letting French business do in Iraq currently), but going bust in the short term won't help that, will it? So the State might consider funding shorter-term stuff currently and encourage Unis to build up endowments from rich philanthropists to fund more esoteric stuff until such a time as science budgets can be restored along with growing economic prowess????
  • mikelawre


    Apologies, I could not have been as clear as I thought. I was saying that my model does not violate unitarity. And separately that the current apparent violation seen in high energy WW scattering is possibly due to the excess relativity factor that has not been accounted for in the accepted definition of a photon's energy, where photons take part in the process. So 2(g-1) h Wo = +/- hW at low energies but = F h W at high energies where F>1 , versus h W currently accepted. I agree the Standard Model is very good. I cannot get to Lamb shift accuracy of 18 dps, only about 12 dps so far. But I only use 1, alpha and g in my interpretation. I am obviously still missing something. But it is the interpretation that is different, rather than the maths, provided I get to 18 bps eventually. And so many unusual results appear automatically that there must be some natural underlying alignment of my model with reality.

     

    Cheers

    Mike

     


  • physicist55
    If your model contains violation of unitarity - which is clearly unphysical (how can something have a probability to occur larger than 1?) in my mind - I don't understand why it is any better than what we already have that works very well (the standard model).
  • mikelawre
    Not the right place for this, but to respond to physicist55's point 'unitarity is violated in WW scattering at the TeV scale in the standard model - so it will for sure break down at LHC energies'. My model does not include electroweak symmetry breaking. Bosons and fermions have mass because their constituent particles (see last post) are in motion, but without particle anti-partners to merge individual constituents into ZMBHs as found in photons (6 ZMBHs rotating about a common axis parallel to direction of travel). It is a Higgsless model where all forces are treated in the same way as each other and at all energy levels with only 3 dimensions, and since everything that goes into a cross-section comes out again, in some form, unitarity is not violated. My speculation on why unitarity appears to be violated in WW scattering is that, for example, the formula for the energy of a photon is currently ?wrong? in that it is E=hW. In my model the energy of a photon is that of, for example, a merged electron and positron, at E = (g-1) h Wo + (g-1) h Wo, where Wo is the Planck angular frequency and g is the relativity factor g=(1 ? W/Wo)^-0.5 with W the frequency of rotation of the constituent particles. So the photon energy in my model is E=2 (g-1) h Wo which approximates to hW only at low energies. It is possibly in the relativistic excess above ?flat? hW that unitarity violation may exist, there being more energy present than hW for the photon should possess. So as scattering energies get higher, the variation from unitarity will grow. This excess photon energy may also appear as extremely high excess energies early on in the Big Bang process, giving an unexpectedly higher red shift for progressively earlier times, or the equivalent to earlier times appearing to have shorter timescales. There are plenty more interesting and different interpretations at my co.uk site pbtsm.
  • physicist55
    "I tend to agree with Mittelweg in general. His specific examples may not all be correct, but the overall thrust of his point is good. There is always as conservative (small 'c') tendency in science. Your professor established this result. You followed on and built on it, and now you pass it on to the newcomers. That's 3 generations with an in-built preference for X over Y. So it will always be hard to overthrow existing theories. " Of course this has always been true in science. But its an enourmous leap from that to claiming the standard model of particle physics is wrong and that therefore we should ONLY fund applied science or engineering as mittelweg claims. How exactly is that going to help someone like you trying to get their theory recognised? Without experimental data a theory is useless. The standard model predicts things we measure to as much as 18 decimal places agreement with experiment. Your never going to overturn that easily simply because it so successful, and it seems unlikely to me it just works by accident. In fact the only way you will overturn it is to come up with a theory that predicts something differently to the standard model and which experiments measure to only be in agreement with your model. By definition a theory of "beyond the standard model" is not predicting anything we can have had good chances of measuring with experiments (until now - because as I am sure you know unitarity is violated in WW scattering at the TeV scale in the standard model - so it will for sure break down at LHC energies). The data will start to put a lot of theorists out of business in the next 5-10 years which is exactly why the LHC is crucial to making any future progress in particle physics. All these theories that are out there cannot all be correct and perhaps are even ALL wrong - we will simply see something completely unexpected at the LHC. No-one saw QM coming after all. But the only way to point the way forward beyond what we have is to go to higher energies at the LHC.
  • mittelweg
    Absolutely right. Although 'blue sky' research should normally be adequately funded, both particle physics and cosmology have lost their way. They have been taken over by mathematicians, 'big machine' administrators and computer modellers, who have produced no insights, only unsupported guesses, for over forty years. Look at the LHC - only just started, no results yet and already asking for a big linear accelerator - ridiculous. Until a new wave of young turks emerge who are driven to go back to real science, actual experiments rather than computer models and hypotheses that really explain observations of the real world, these fields no longer deserve the big funding they have become used to. If this sounds harsh, compare with the fields of biology and solid-state physics, which have produced breakthrough after breakthrough over the last fifty years, based on ingenious experiments and a willingness to abandon hypotheses the instant they no longer work. Whereas in particle physics and cosmology, long-standing professorial cliques and outdated theories are propped up with Alice-in-Wonderland mathematics requiring a Universe of many dimensions to 'work', whereas observational science obstinately tells us there are still only three dimensions. Boring, but true. The Royal Society has also lost its way, having become transformed into a financial clearing house for the distribution of Government money to finance science research programmes - but only those programmes of which Government approves, and only those led by people of which it approves. The predictable result has come to pass, that the scientists that get the funding are those with a talent for writing grant applications and who know the right people at the RS. The importance or originality of the research is no longer the deciding factor. How the RS has allowed itself to become a cash cow for a purely PR organisation like the IPCC is a disgrace. The RS should be relieved of its role as a controller of research funds. Maybe this function worked better when Universities made their own research priorities. It certainly doesn't work when politicians gets their venal fingers on scientific research and when scientists sell their souls to Government.
  • mittelweg
    You are plain wrong on every count and just regurgitating the same old hypotheses which do not work. It is widely accepted among physicists that the Standard Model is wrong somewhere, because its predictions work inside the atom but not when applied to observations of the larger Universe. Unfortunately no one has identified exactly what is wrong and the argument tends to reduce to cliques defending their proprietorial bit of territory within the Model. Of course the Standard Model works very well in particle physics - it has all been carefully back-engineered to fit properly. But if you extend its predictions to the macro-Universe, it ceases to work. Unless, of course, you hypothesise that there is one physics for the sub-atomic world and another for the macro-Universe. String theory, which is claimed to be required to explain some of the weirder tenets of particle physics, does indeed require several dimensions - it varies between eleven and nineteen, depending on who you are arguing with. Multi-dimensions have also been proposed to explain some of the workings of quantum chromodynamics, of which it is often said - "it is weirder than you could possibly imagine". OK it makes it sound cool, but it does not carry the gravitas of sound science. The proposals of Schrodinger, originally made to show how dumb quantum physics was, were in fact taken fully on board, by the Copenhagen physicists, who claimed that logic had nothing to do with the quantum world. Some physicists still have a problem with that, as did Einstein, to his dieing day. Non-conservation of parity is a concept introduced by mathematicians to explain observations indicating that the Model is wrong. It is a concept as dodgy as proposing that the Laws of Thermodynamics are not observed and should have been an early warning that the whole theoretical base is too shaky to hold. The observations leading to the proposal of quarks are based on very shaky evidence and even shakier statistical treatment of experimental results from large accelerators. These data are not reproducible and would never have been accepted in any other branch of science. You are even wrong about the world wide web. Tim Berners Lee, its designer and promoter, certainly took his degree in physics, but describes himself as 'an engineer and computer scientist'. He is certainly not a particle physicist. In other words, he exactly embodies the approach to science being promoted by the Royal Academy of Engineering, reported in this article as opposing the pure-science approach of the Royal Society. And rightly.
  • Lord Browne is thought to be the main cause for BP's poor safety record after all his cost cutting. Hayward has been trying to get things back on track undoing the damage. Thus, given his "capabilities" I would question his suitability for his current role and have grave doubts about his proposal to re-direct UK scientific research (to his own organisation's benefit).
  • physicist55
    "If this sounds harsh, compare with the fields of biology and solid-state physics, which have produced breakthrough after breakthrough over the last fifty years, based on ingenious experiments and a willingness to abandon hypotheses the instant they no longer work." Lets see - 50 years ago takes us to 1960: 1957 - acceptance that nature does NOT conserve parity 1964 - acceptance that quarks really exist, despite widespread opposition just to take two examples. Once the data supported it hypotheses were modified.
  • WaywardPython
    Mr Connor's hyperbole would be better served in pieces for The Sun or Mirror methinks. Petty sh*t stirring trying to masquerade as science journalism.